


A Weasley Christmas

by Saraste



Series: 2019 Advent Ficlet Challenge [13]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 13. family, Adopted Children, Advent Ficlet Challenge 2019, Christmas Fluff, Found Family, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, The Burrow (Harry Potter), The Potter-Malfoy Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21782929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: Draco ponders the shifting meaning of family... while spending Christmas Day at the Burrow with Harry and their children.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Series: 2019 Advent Ficlet Challenge [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558918
Comments: 3
Kudos: 61
Collections: 2019 Advent Ficlet Challenge





	A Weasley Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day 13. family of the 2019 Advent Ficlet Challenge.

This was not what he had thought to expect when he’d been a child, not at all, about Christmas, or his life. There were children of varied ages running about, most sporting red hair, and his _own_ _children_ were among the wild fray, laughing and chasing. Not at all like he might have imagined a Christmas could be, or, what he had never thought it could until his first Weasley Christmas.

Everyone was smiling, even the adults, and if one of the children knocked something over, there was no icy silence or promise of punishment, just an adult checking if the child was alright. Nothing like his childhood Yuletides, or his childhood, at least where the man who had been his father had been concerned.

A Malfoy Christmas had always been just so, a rigid celebration of midwinter with not even one spruce branch out of place, Christmas Day always following a set pattern. It hadn’t been that his parents, well, _his mother_ , hadn’t cared about him, but it was just that they only knew the ways in which they had been taught themselves. And there had been no turning Lucius Malfoy’s mind where tradition ad being _proper wizards of blood and breeding_ had been concerned.

But this…

Draco preferred this. It was almost unimaginable that he was celebrating with Weasley’s, or had been, once upon a time. But had he not been won over by the general cheerfulness and happiness, the rambunctious spirit of the season that seemed almost to make the Burrow fit to burst at the seams, he would have embraced it full-heartedly upon seeing the smiles on his children’s faces. His and _Harry’s_ children, twin girls with reddish hair and a boy that looked the miniature of Harry, all adopted but no less loved or wanted.

Family, Draco had learned, and almost too late, was the people you chose, not necessarily those you were related to, born to, even though one could choose to have them too, despite everything.

His own mother was sitting in a shabby armchair by the fire and she was actually smiling and enjoying herself, looking at the post-dinner chaos the children indulge in that was practically tradition. She was talking with Aunt-Andromeda, both had been coming to the Weasley Christmas Dinner for several years now, and no-one even did a double take over his mother any longer. Most adults were either sitting and digesting a lovely meal, watching the children or helping Molly in the kitchen, where she only allowed a select few, currently Ginny, Luna and Neville. Draco was sitting down because he’d already done his bit by providing a lovely layered chocolate cake iced with white frosting and sprinkled artistically with sugar snowflakes in shades of blue. But he was getting a bit antsy, not knowing quite where the children were.

Right on cue, the mob of children careened back into the sitting room. Their youngest, little Esme, a whole five minutes younger than her twin Amy, stopped by her grandmother and clambered up into her lap for a cuddle, which was returned without hesitation. It warmed Draco’s heart seeing how much his mother had changed, finally free to express her love less formally, now, after everything.

As the rest milled about, Draco snatched a giggling Amy into his own lap and pressed kisses all over her toddler-soft cheeks, which were somewhat grubby from the pudding Molly had served after dinner, his heart melting as she kissed him back, not even caring that she got her sticky hands all over his clothes, that’s what cleaning charms were for, and he and Harry had gotten rather good with those.

‘Where’s Leo?’ he asked her, watching Esme snuggling deeper into his mother’s lap, she would be asleep in under five minutes if he knew anything. Their son was actually properly named Leofwine, as a nod to the more complex names his mother’s own family had always favoured, and because Draco had nixed the use of Fleamont that had been Harry’s suggestion, and both had liked that their children’s names had the same meaning while also being of old root.

Amy flopped in his arms like the ragdoll she was still clutching, her first proper Christmas present when she’d been two and which she clung to three years later. The thought of her and Esme’s first Christmas was fleeting and he didn’t allow it to take root, all their Christmases _would_ and had been happy if he had any say in it. ‘Don’t know, daddy.’

As he watched her now one wouldn’t have known that she hadn’t always been with them ̶ apart from both her and Esme sometimes clinging a little and liking to be held more than Leo ever had after he’d been a baby ̶ she was such a happy and bright child, as was Esme.

‘He’s in the garden with Harry, last I saw,’ Hermione said from behind the cough, _not_ starling him, whatever her smile as he looked at her might imply, ‘they’re playing with Leo’s tea-cup dragon with Charlie.’

Draco sighed, wanting to cover his face with his hands save that they were occupied with holding onto Amy. ‘That man…’

She came around the couch and ruffled Amy’s chestnut hair as she sat down beside him. ‘Don’t worry so much, Charlie would never give anything to his nephew that would hurt him.’

‘You and I both know that Charlie has a blind spot where his dragons and safety are concerned.’

‘But you do trust Harry, don’t you?’

Amy spilled herself over half of Hermione’s lap. ‘Thank you for the book, Aunt Mione.’

Her smile was wide and happy, that of one confirmed book worm to another in the making. ‘I hope you like it.’

Thankfully it was a book of fiction about a princess who saved herself _and_ a dragon, and not some heavy tome on wizarding history or the like, or Draco would have had to have words with her, not really wanting his children to grow up too quick. Amy and Esme were only a few months older than five and while he didn’t disapprove neither of them reading, he didn’t want to push them out of their childhoods too quickly either.

But with half of the Weasley brothers being still half children themselves, although Charlie was the worst of the lot with his dragons, any bookishness of Hermione’s was balanced out. And their children had more cousins to play with than Draco ever remembered having, at least of an age with himself, so there was no worry that they wouldn’t get to be just children. And all of theirs, by some stroke of luck, had magic, even the twins, who had been adopted through muggle adoption, so they wouldn’t feel left out, even when no-one would have loved them any less.

There was, of course, the family filling the cozy house, which meant that Draco and Harry’s children would never be left alone.

He had a sudden urge to see Leo, make sure he was fine, even when he mostly trusted Harry’s judgement with what came to safety, so he caught his daughter’s attention. ‘You want to snuggle Auntie Mione for a bit?’

*

And there he was, face alight with the light from a small flame, their darling boy whom they had fought for so fiercely, _their son_.

Draco pushed his hands into his pockets. ‘Are you going to stay out here all night or are you coming inside for coffee and cake?’ It was a nonchalant question, but neither Leo nor Harry were actually wearing a coat and there was snow on the ground and there was a definite snap in the air which predicted temperatures plummeting even further as the evening grew nearer. His own breath came out in a mist and he regretted his own lack of coat or cloak.

Harry turned to him, young and boyish for all that he was over thirty, his grin easily seen in the light spilling out from the windows. ‘It’s not even half past four.’

‘It’s almost five,’ Draco corrected, ‘and neither of you have coats on.’ He was ignoring a smug and grinning Charlie Weasley, who was decidedly boyish even around forty.

‘I cast a heating charm!’ that dragon-obsessed menace announced cheerfully, but he was really no judge, as the man seemed to not have a normal sense of cold as far as Draco could tell after years of knowing him, _and_ he was in his shirt-sleeves now.

Draco caught Leo into his arms, even when he was a bit too heavy to lift so easily at seven (and Harry having remarked how much skinnier he’d himself been at seven had made Draco go and hex his aunt, which he hadn’t, but only after Harry had spent two hours convincing him not to), but who clung to him like a limpet all the same. ‘Your uncle Charlie is an absolutely ridiculous person.’ It was a statement more than a reprimand or a tease.

Or at least Charlie always took it as such, bowing as always and holding the wee dragon aloft on the palm of his right hand, gloveless, of course, because who needed gloves to handle a dragon? ‘I aim to live up to expectations.’

Leo giggled.

Having ascertained that his son was indeed warm and not catching his death out in the winter air and cold, Draco turned to Harry, son still firmly held in his arms. ‘Let’s go inside, Leo will have all the time in the world to play with that dragon later.’

‘ _Dad_!’

‘Oh, so you don’t want cake? Your cousins can eat it all?’ Draco teased, still awed his son had cousins enough to fear cake running out, even when there were three different sorts waiting and a table-full of other assorted baked goods besides.

Leo squirmed out of his arms and bounded towards the light. At least he was wearing shoes. And didn’t slip on the snowy ground and crack his head open.

Harry stepped next to him and wound his arms around him and kissed him, his lips a little cold but warming quickly. Draco hugged him back, giving of his own warmth, delighting in being here, in this place, with these people, with _family_ , his own and extended, bound together by affection and choice, not just blood. And it was good.

Then a small flame licked too close to his face for comfort and he had to chase a cackling Charlie Weasley around the garden while his husband looked on, doubled over with laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> I will be following the further and earlier exploits of Leofwine, Esme and Amy Malfoy-Potter, as I realized while writing this that they fit perfectly into a drarry adoption fic I've been writing this year, which I'll hopefully start posting... when I start posting it.


End file.
